The distant new year's music flowed around me still I felt much happier, and far more tender; I saw the _coming_ sorrows in the new born year, but they wore such lovely masks that they were more like sorrows that are _past_, or like the music around me--just as the rain which falls through the great caverns in the Derbyshire hills sounds in the distance like music. But when I looked around me, and saw the white earth shining like a white sun, and the silent deep blue sphere all round, like a household circle of one great family--and as the music, like lovelier sighs, accompanied my thoughts--as I fixed my gaze, with grateful heart, upon the starry sky where all these thousands of stedfast witnesses of the beautiful moments (moments faded, out of bloom, indeed, now--but the great Beneficence spreads their _seed_ for evermore)--when I thought of the men asleep all around me, and wished that they might all be happier when they opened their eyes in the morning--and when I thought of those awake UNDER me, whose slumbering souls stood in need of such a wish,--my heart, oppressed by the music, and by the night, grew heavy and grew full, and the blue sky, the glittering moon, and the sparkling snow-height all melted into one great floating shimmer. And in the shimmer, and amid the music, I heard voices of my friends, and dear fellow-creatures, tenderly and anxiously wishing their new year's wishes. They touched my heart so deeply, that I could but barely _think_ my own-- "Oh! may you all be happy _all_ the years of your lives." END OF BOOK I. PREFACE TO THE SECOND, THIRD, AND FOURTH BOOKS. It has often been a source of much annoyance to me that to every preface I write I am obliged to append a book--like the endorsement on a bill of exchange--or an appendix to letters A to Z. Many a man who dabbles in authorship by way of amusement has his books sent to him all ready written and complete, straight from the cradle; so that all he has to do is to attach his gold frontlets of prefaces to their foreheads--which is nothing but painting the _corona_ about the sun. As yet, however, not a single author has applied to me for a preamble to a book, although for several years I have had a considerable number of prefaces by me (all ready beforehand, and going at great bargains), in which I extol to the best of my ability works which have not as yet come in to being. In fact, I have now a perfect museum of these prize medals and commemoration medals of other people's cleverness at the service of anyone who may stand in need of them; they are all made by the very finest of mint-machinery, and my collection of them is increasing day by day; so that I shall be obliged to sell it off wholesale before very long (I don't see what else I can do), and bring out a book--consisting of nothing but pre-existent prefaces.